Something True

Something True brings you incredible and bizarre true stories from the footnotes of history. A dog in the United States Cabinet? A leading rocket scientist who quit his job to make a moonchild? Virginia Woolf donning blackface to prank a navy? They're all true. They're all Something True.

All Episodes

Guillaume le Gentil didn’t find purpose in the church, seeking it instead in the stars. In 1761, he participated in a global astronomical mission to observe the Transit of Venus from various stations across the globe. …

What if Genghis Khan died, just before he really got going? Thanks to a blacksmith's son called Jelme, we don't have to wonder. We might, however, wonder why Jelme's heroic rescue required so much blood and so little …

Elias Mortimer, a construction lobbyist, needed to land his firm a fat government contract to build veterans' hospitals. Luckily for him, the chief of the Veterans' Bureau had three great loves: getting bribed, …

John Swartwout was minding his own business—scheming against the United States government with his friend, vice president Aaron Burr—when a senator slandered him as a scoundrel. A scoundrel! What was Swartwout to do? …

The prince was murdered, and the princess given two demands: surrender the kingdom, and marry the enemy prince. She said yes—but what she did instead, nobody saw coming. If this were a video podcast, it'd be banned in …

In 1852, one of the wealthiest landowners in California drowned crossing a river. The ensuing scramble for his fortune spilled blood and broke hearts. Note: The area in which this story takes place is now Gilroy, …

What is history's greatest prank? There's the intimate—perching a bucket of water over the door. And the grandly ambitious—say, humiliating an entire navy. These are some good pranks indeed. But history's greatest prank …